Risk settings encourage disciplined trading and help protect profits.
When I joined Topstep, key risk settings were underutilized after years without dedicated design attention.
Role
Senior Product Designer
Platform
Web
Goal
Increase usage of risk settings
Impact
Increased unique trader engagement across key controls by 8–45%+
Problem definition & discovery
User Experience
Usability Heuristics like “clear system status” were lacking. The settings also did not clearly signal their value to traders.
Usage
In interviews traders reported barely using - to not using risk tools at all.
Scalability
The company wanted to build out these features more. However, they lacked a clear IA to do so.
User Value
Risk tools help traders stick to their limits when emotions take over, protecting profits and supporting their progression from simulated to live trading.
“One trade goes wrong… then you take another trade, and then from there, you just tilt. The emotions get to you, and the psychology of everything just goes down the drain.”
“Lock out features are top notch and an absolute must for me. It has prevented me from tilting on more than one occasion. Additionally, I cannot count on myself alone to keep me from overtrading (revenge, FOMO, etc.) especially when I’m taking losses. I set my own DLL and max trades per day for every account.”
“Lock out to stop over trading / DLL to stop revenge trading / Max contract size to stop puting on bigger size then I should”
Low fi exploration & early mockups
Exploration
Lockout calendar
Coach T (AI) recommendations
Pre-configured settings
Mockups
Manual lockout
Accordion + side panel
Sidebar navigation
High fidelity
Increased trader usage of:
PDLL Action
PDLL Value
8%
14%
45%+
Add max contracts
34%
Add symbol blocks
What happens next?
While we released the new foundations for risk settings I worked on additional risk management features.
Lockout scheduling
“I’d also love to see ... a schedule to lock their account out every day at the end of NY and all of Asia for example.”
“In high-stress environments, we really want the simple, hard facts, and not to search for all that.”
Increasing discovery
